2024 Net Worth Goal: $750,000

This is my first “official” monthly net worth round up. And my 2024 net worth goal is $750,000.

Why that number? because it is half-way to my FI number. That’s why.

Is adding over $100,000 to my net worth reasonable or even feasible within 6 months from the level I’m at today, and in a presidential election year no less?

I have no idea. But I’m going to throw it out there regardless.

I’m writing this from my new home office, that is to say my bedroom in the new townhome I recently moved into after signing separation paperwork with my wife earlier this month.

(I’m not fully moved in yet, tbh, but I have moved my office furniture so I can start spending my working days here and enjoy a bit of peace and quiet – the house where my wife lives is VERY noisy, between dogs, leaf blowers, and general mayhem).

Anyway, let’s get into this month’s net worth analysis. Although this is my first monthly recap, you can see my full net worth tracker here. I’ve been tracking it pretty consistently since July 2019.

Over time, I expect the categories to change slightly. Also, I have two businesses that don’t have value outside of the business accounts and the work I do for them, so I’m not including those values here unless/until the operating balances grow large enough to make a difference. Right now they are both under $5,000, so the amount is negligible.

Current Asset Values

Real Estate: This consists primarily of our old residence turned rental property. I have a good tenant who will be staying there until August of 2025 at least. This property cash flows approximately $425 per month, (I’m not counting the HELOC for reasons that I will discuss if you scroll down). I came up with this value by averaging the values for the property from Zillow and Redfin.

Retirement Accounts: I have a number of retirement accounts that I have accumulated over the years, including a SEP IRA, Rollover IRA, Inherited IRA, ROTH, and even a Self-Employed 401(k). As of January next year I will also have a traditional 401(k) that I am starting for my primary business.

Right now I am focused on paying off debt, so I’m not contributing to any of these accounts. However, I am invested heavily in Apple stock, which had a great month (up 10%), leading to the hike in this value. And thank you Apple for waiting until after I finalized my separation agreement to jump in value. I wish I could say I planned that, but I’m not that smart. 😉

Investment/Savings: Now that I have divided accounts with my wife and am no longer concerned that she will run up credit cards, I’ve started a systematic plan to pay down my debt. I pulled a significant amount from my after-tax investment accounts and paid down a big chunk of credit cards. I plan to continue paying down about $3,500-$5,000 per month until all cards are paid off – hopefully by the end of the year.

Checking Accounts: This is the balance today. But in the next week this will start to get drawn down as I’ve scheduled payments for all my bills for the month of July. I’m debating whether I should actually track these numbers in future updates. This amount also includes the rent payment I already received for July.

Car: This is the Kelley Blue Book value. It hasn’t changed at all in 6 months. I suspect if I needed to sell the car, I wouldn’t get that much.

Liability Analysis

Mortgage: This is the mortgage for my rental property. The interest rate is 2.85%, which is why I don’t mind holding this property for another year. My wife wanted to sell, hence I owe her a huge promissory note. I’m just paying the regular payments currently, nothing extra on principal.

Promissory Note: This was what we calculated I would need to pay my Wife to equalize our financial assets. I have to start paying her interest at some point if the house isn’t sold. That will suck. But hopefully the value of the house will continue to rise. If real estate tanks I could be seriously screwed. But that’s the gamble I took.

HELOC: Man. Where do I start with this. This is basically a huge credit card that we used to finance a lot of things that we could afford. This was tremendously stupid. But what is done is done. My plan is to continue paying this down with my rent payments and pay it off (as well as the promissory note) when I sell this property later in 2025.

Auto Loan: Nothing much to say about this. I’ve considered selling my car and paying off this loan. That would probably be the smart thing to do. However, I drive the car a lot, I like the car, and I will probably keep this car for at least another 10 years. It’s a Honda, it’s reliable and safe, and it has room for all my kids. I plan to aggressively pay this down after I have eliminated all other consumer debt.

Personal Loan: Another “questionable” decision. This was originally a $40,000 loan. The payments are $1,300/month. When I took this out, we used it to pay off most of our credit cards. I made my wife promise me that we wouldn’t incur a bunch of additional debt after I took out this loan. Well, we can see how that worked out which is why we are now separating.

Credit Card Debts: This includes my two major credit cards. I have three total, but paid off the third (which had the highest interest rate) this month. This does NOT include two cards I use for each of my two businesses. For my main business, I pay off the card each month.

The second business card carries a balance that I am slowly paying off through revenue of the business. But since those are “business” debts and relatively small, I’m not counting them here. As I mentioned before, I’m paying approximately $3,500 to $5,000 towards personal credit cards each month and my plan is to have them all paid off by the end of the year.

You may notice that the credit card have not decreased as much as the amount I withdrew from savings. This is in part because I made the final payment for my kids summer camp out of credit cards this month (a $1,417 charge), and also because I have incurred a number of financial expenses related to moving into a new townhome, including paying a security deposit and first months rent. I used money from savings for these.

Student Loan: I’m paying $300/month on these loans. Only 6.5 payments to go!

So there you have it – my first monthly net worth update for June 2024. I would like to be at $750,000 by the end of the year. Can I do it?

How I Plan to Track My 2024 Net Worth Goal

For years I’ve been adding up all of my accounts in a Google Sheet and tracking my net worth that way.

But recently I discovered Monarch Money.

Monarch Money allows you to see your net worth in real time, every day, without adding everything into a spreadsheet. So far I love it.

I’ll talk more about Monarch Money in a future post, but for now you should use this link to check it out and see if it will make it easier to track your net worth.

FYI, that is an affiliate link. Which means if you sign up for Monarch Money, it won’t cost you anything extra, but it will help to support my blog.

Thank you in advance!